Understanding Your Right as an Employee – Is it legal to work over 12 hours a day?

Many employees in Indonesia do not know the rules regarding maximum working hours. Here is the clear explanation of this matter.

Working hour is something that must get the employee’s attention. By knowing the duration of their work, an employee can understand when he to go home and live a life outside of the workplace. In addition, working hours can also be a key factor of salary increases or additional facilities. If you are working for a long period of time, you can make the duration of your daily work as a reason for asking for a promotion or salary increases.

Unfortunately, there are still many employees in Indonesia who do not understand government regulations about working hours, even though this matter is actually very important to protect the workers so that they will not become victims of labor exploitation.

To provide you with a detailed explanation of the working hour’s regulations that apply in Indonesia, here are some key points.

Basic Rules of Labor Law

Based on the provisions regulated by the labor law, the working time for 6 (six) working days a week is a maximum of 7 hours per day or 40 hours a week. Meanwhile, for those who work 5 (five) days a week, they can only work 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week.

In summary, the limit of the work time is 7 hours or 8 hours which should not exceed 40 hours total per week. In practice, a day’s work hours are usually added with a rest period or lunchtime, so that the work time in total is 7 hours to 8 hours or 8 hours to 9 hours per day, depending on how long the rest is given.

This regulation is written in Law No. 13 of 2003 concerning Manpower from Article 77 to Article 85.

Special Exception

In certain work sectors, the regulations regarding working hours mentioned above do not apply. The special sectors in question are offshore oil drilling, long-distance transport drivers, long-haul flights, work on ships (sea), or logging.

Another example of a special business sector is the field of general mining. The working hours of the general mining employees are regulated in the Indonesian Manpower and Transmigration Regulation No PER-15 / MEN / VII / 2005.

Is It Legal to Work Over 12 Hours A Day?

Asking employees to work for more than 12 hours a day is actually allowed with the provision of excess normal work time (8 hours a day for 5 working days or 7 hours for 6 working days) paid as overtime pay.

However, this must be done based on the agreement between the company and its employees. The company does not have the right to force its employees to work overtime unilaterally. This means that the decision to work for more than 12 hours is in the hands of the employee.

Finally, from the above article, it can be seen that the government has clear regulations regarding employee working hours. As a suggestion, you should not work overtime too often, besides being able to drain your stamina, this habit can also reduce your valuable time to socialize with the surrounding environment. After all, money can never buy time.